sustainability – ecosistema urbanohttp://ecosistemaurbano.org
sostenibilidad urbana creativaMon, 19 Nov 2018 12:29:31 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.8Unveiling the latest images of the Banyan Hub | A project for a new Hybrid Building in West Palm Beach, Floridahttp://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/banyan-hub-project/
http://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/banyan-hub-project/#respondMon, 19 Nov 2018 11:05:23 +0000http://ecosistemaurbano.org/?p=41363
After winning the international competition Shore to Core, commissioned by the West Palm Beach Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) and organized by the Van Alen Institute in 2017, Ecosistema Urbano is developing several parts of the proposal, among them the visionary Banyan Hub building.

The Banyan Hub project arises from the intuition of the City of West Palm Beach and the CRA to transform the existing Banyan Garage, a car-devoted building from the 70s in the heart of the Downtown, into a new opportunity to activate the city, a hub for dozens of new activities for both residents and visitors.

Ecosistema Urbano has finalized the Schematic Design of the project that has been officially approved by the West Palm Beach City Commission on Oct. 22. The project will be further developed in the next months.

The Banyan Hub in the surrounding context of West Palm Beach.

A hybrid and flexible building open day and night
The Banyan Hub offers in a single building a wide range of different programs, from open and public spaces to reserved and private areas. The wide variety of possibilities that the building brings will have an important impact on the way of living in West Palm Beach Downtown. The programs collaborate with one another, creating a public facilities machine in which each part works separately, but all of them work together to offer the user a superb experience of public-private spaces. The program includes urban plazas, retail and catering, rooftop pavilion, YMCA, business hub, mobility hub, housing, and city support area.
Sustainability and bioclimatic design are key ingredients of the Banyan Hub, that is strongly characterized by its breathing façade, two courtyards, and multiple active and passive climatic devices.

Banyan Hub | A complex program building enveloped by a green permeable skin.

Urban bioclimatic plazas: expanding public space possibilities and multiplying them by 3
The public heart of the Banyan Hub beats on the three public plazas located on different levels:

A flexible and permeable plaza at ground level, with an open hall connected to the surrounding streets and to the rear passageway, that integrates retail, catering and several support spaces.

Banyan Hub | Ground Floor Plaza layout.

A covered open-air plaza at an intermediate level for temporary events, including spectacular features such as a digital interactive waterfall or a green courtyard, or local programs as the farmers market.

Enjoying urban life at Banyan Elevated Urban Plaza. .

A top terrace, overlooking the lagoon offering a panoramic view of the unique Floridian natural environment and of the whole Downtown. The terrace accommodates a civic pavilion to host civic events (public meetings, projections, performances) as well as private events such as weddings.

Celebrating at the Banyan Hub Rooftop Terrace.

Interconnected public spaces
The three main public spaces will be connected to provide the experience of having a chameleonic journey through different environments. The Downtown is connected to the middle level elevated urban plaza through an exterior escalator that dynamizes the façade on Banyan Blvd., allowing to stop by the retail ring at the first two levels. From the elevated plaza, it will be possible to go up to the terrace using the breathtaking helical ramp around the green courtyard.

Banyan Hub Bioclimatic Design | A green living building.

A building green in the middle
Other uses in the central block of the building are the Business Hub and the YMCA, each of them occupying two levels. Both areas feature the presence of the central green courtyard, an open-air multi-level natural space that gives continuity to the landscaped urban plazas of the building. Moreover, the green courtyard has a relevant passive bioclimatic function as it would help to reduce temperatures by up to 5ºF and regulate ventilation, providing pleasant environmental conditions throughout the year while reducing environmental impact and management and operational costs.

Business Hub | Working at the Banyan Hub in close connection to nature.

A breathing skin
The façade acts as one of the main conditioning systems of the building, filtering the direct sunlight and regulating ventilation. It is formed by an array of individual elements that present a responsive behavior, autonomously sensing the climatic conditions and the needs of the building and changing their configuration. Protected by the external shading, there is a green buffer zone, mainly comprised of a permeable structure holding vegetation and supporting varied activities. This space acts as a second natural filter for light and breeze and contributes to the regulation of the internal temperature through evaporative cooling.

YMCA at Banyan Hub | Exterior running track at 113’ at Banyan YMCA.

YMCA at Banyan Hub | Swimming in the sky at Banyan YMCA.

Living overlooking the lagoon
The upper block of the building is dedicated to housing. The residential units face out to the exterior, enjoying privileged views of the city and the lagoon. A modular system allows for the combination of units of different sizes, ranging from 500 to 1500 sq.ft. Limited living spaces of micro-units are compensated by indoor and outdoor common facilities, specifically conceived to foster the sense of community of residents. Residential units are arranged around a shared courtyard, where vegetation will help to refresh the interior micro-climate, maintaining the appropriate temperature and humidity levels to achieve comfort for users.

Living at Banyan Hub | Outdoor common facilities for residents.

Banyan Hub | Cross section and night elevation in Olive Ave. .

Making an invisible parking
The Banyan Hub will continue to serve as a municipal garage for the city’s needs, as its functioning is crucial to parking management of West Palm Beach Downtown. However, the parking will be completely upgraded using an Automated Parking System technology. With this system, the required 350 parking spots will occupy only the ⅔ of the volume currently used by the existing Banyan garage. Moreover, as the ambition of the Banyan Hub is to be an active piece of the city that projects its active life towards the surrounding context, a specific solution has been designed to ensure that the uses along the façades reflect the dynamism of the building. The 4 levels of parking are enclosed at the very core of the building, completely hidden from the outside; these are surrounded on 4 sides by two levels of retail and catering connected by a public corridor that gives architectural quality to this space while activates it.

About West Palm Beach Community Redevelopment Agency
Created in 1984 and authorized by Florida’s Community Redevelopment Act of 1969 (F.S. 163, Part III), the West Palm Beach CRA is nationally recognized as one of the most innovative and effective Community Redevelopment Agencies (CRAs) in the country and is setting the standard for redevelopment. The downtown core has gone through a rebirth with substantial private investment including commercial and residential development. Public investment dollars total in the millions with a state-of-the-art library, revitalization of the historic Sunset Lounge, streetscape infrastructure, and an enhanced waterfront. The CRA continues to coordinate with the City and other agencies to market and revitalize the downtown.

During the last year we have been busy with several projects and competitions (including the latest Open Shore project for West Palm Beach) which didn’t give us the time to look back and reflect on some of our projects from the last few years.

As maybe some of our readers know, Ecosistema Urbano has been working on several large-scale projects in Latin America since August 2014 when we won a competition to develop the Master Plan of the Historical Center of Asuncion, Paraguay. In 2015, we accomplished another significant project: the participatory process Centro Histórico Abierto for the transformation of the historical center of Distrito Central, capital of Honduras. We also worked on the transformative Cuenca RED project which acted on the Public Space Reactivation Plan of the Historical Center of Cuenca, Ecuador. After the first experience in Paraguay, we had another project in the city of Encarnación, giving origin to the Plan Encarnación Más, composed by an Urban and Territorial Planning and Sustainability Plan.

In these four cases, the urban issues and the peculiar situations that required our intervention were distinct yet shared many common features. More specifically, the enthusiasm and interest shown by the people directly and indirectly involved was apparent throughout all of the projects, but also the opportunities that these experiences have given us as an architecture firm, to test ideas, tools, and methodologies.

CONTEXT

Although they share the same area of origin, each of these cities has developed unique problems and issues. Some of these, such as the ones found in Encarnación, are physical-territorial matters such as the recent loss of the city center because of the controlled rise of the water level in the Yacyretá dam. That event led to the envisioning of a “Sustainable Development Plan” and “Urban and Territorial Ordering Plan” in order to prepare the city for the future. In the case of Cuenca, the need for a new plan was determined by a series of big changes underway: the definition of a new model of mobility and the progressive emptying of population that afflicts the historical center, World Heritage Site since 1999, and headquarters of most of the commercial, touristic and economic city’s activities. In the case of Asunción and of the capital of Honduras, the project regards the transformation and the regeneration (both physical and social) of their historic centers. The Distrito Central is part of the development framework of the new urban axis “Choluteca River”.

SOCIAL

1 – Participation

The first of the projects’ common keys are connected with the theme of sociability, expressed in the form of participation. The citizens’ involvement, promoted both through a series of organized activities and through online platforms, has been one of the cornerstones of our work in Latin America. We involve citizens because we believe that the citizen is the only force able to achieve a deep and lasting change in the urban environment and so they should not be just a passive receptor of the changes promoted by the city’s institutions. That’s why in some cases, as in that of Asunción with the ASU-LAB, a space was created which could serve as an interface between citizens and institutions: a place for the execution of the city planning but also an open place where each person or group can drive a new regeneration initiative or attend a course.

Organized activities with the citizens

Participatory activities, such as workshops and events, have been geared to address representative members of the city such as children, university students, “active agents”, citizens and institutions. For each of these categories we have developed, project after project, a series of ad hoc initiatives.

Participatory process in Asunción, Encarnación, Cuenca and in Distrito Central

For the children we created a “toolkit” with which we had them reflect on their perception of the city and with which they could propose their ideal vision for the city. The kit consists of portions of the city map on which they could draw and that, once recomposed, could recreate the overall image.

2 – Urban actions

These activities were followed by a series of urban actions so that the results could be shown tangibly in the city. In the case of Distrito Central, ideas were gathered in a week of workshops with 80 students from the three major universities in the city and have been translated into urban actions like “Las Gradas de la Leona“. The staircases are indispensable spaces in a city with a very distinct topography as Tegucigualpa. But in the city these vertical connections are often perceived as inhospitable, dangerous, and dirty places and therefore they are cut off from any kind of activity. The students’ work was aimed at legitimizing these stairs as a public space through cleanliness, decor, lighting, and the organization of a series of activities that achieved resounding success and participation.

Socialization along “Las gradas de la Leona”

In the case of Encarnación, one of the proposals that has distinguished our approach in this project was the inclusion of a series of pilot projects that accompany and translate into concrete proposals within the “Plan de Desarrollo Sustentable” and the “Plan de Ordenamiento”. Among these, one of the most successful pilot projects was the “Proyecto Piloto Bicisienda“, whose purpose is to improve the quality of life of the inhabitants by optimizing the use of alternative mobility and by raising awareness of the value of sports and recreation. Again we have sought the cooperation of citizens by promoting a series of initiatives (such as the construction of bike lanes in the city) in which the citizens could feel protagonistic.

Proyecto Piloto Bicisienda

3 – Informative events

The disclosure of the participatory process to the citizenship, promoted both online through the project’s platforms and through open exhibitions, is a recurring phase in all four projects. We felt it important and necessary that each phase of the process was documented and could be easily accessible to all so that the citizens could be informed about the progress made in the project. Among these, the most scenic event, realized in Tegucigualpa, Cuenca and Encarnación, was the creation of a ” mosaico ciudadano“, a wall made of post-it notes with written words, phrases, and ideas about the city.

City mosaic in the several projects

SUSTAINABILITY

Another theme of our projects in Latin America is sustainable development expressed in various forms: care and attention to the environment, the introduction of an alternative mobility system, the importance of education to the environment as an engine of sustainability, and the development of the project made in collaboration between private initiatives and institutional management. In the case of Cuenca, for example, our intervention was partly required as a consequence of the municipality’s willingness to define a new model of mobility for the historical center of the city consisting of ceasing car traffic in the center and building a new tramway system. This new model of mobility has direct implications for the current urban dynamics, as well as on the public space, as it tries to reduce the vehicular load of the city, giving priority to pedestrians and cyclists. This, and the creation of quality public space, led to strengthen the social, economic, and cultural role of the city’s historical center making it more pleasant for residents and locals. Our aim is to activate a historical center that promotes social, economic, and environmental development, as well as a more livable, habitable, and inhabited historical center.

Cuenca’s plan is divided into four aspects: an urban acupuncture strategy, which proposes small / medium-scale interventions to recover areas with potential; a development of a network of active courtyards, by transforming the typical patios of Cuenca in catalysts capable of generating new synergies, connections, and interactions between residents, visitors and inhabitants; a guide to the historic center re-design, which defines the main lines for the design of the public space; a process of socialization, to define the “acopuntura” and the active patios network strategies. The intervention strategy in the square “Mary Corilè” in conjunction with the creation of “La casa en el árbol” is part of the active patios network strategy. This square is an unused and degraded space, perceived by the residents as an unpleasant and dangerous place.

The square “Mary Corilè”

Among the several interventions proposed, such as the re-furnishing of the square, traffic closure, and the design of activities in collaboration with the municipality, there’s also the creation of “La casa en el árbol“, a space included in the existing trees of the square where educational activities in relation to the theme of the environment can be carried out. “La casa en el árbol” is set up as a space to get in contact and be familiar with the nature, built in harmony with the surroundings. Inside there are several “environmental” classrooms in which one can study natural resources such as sun, wind, and water. More specifically, one can study: a system of photovoltaic panels that generate the energy needed for the lights, rainwater harvesting structures, and urban gardens as environmental and ecological experiences for schools and kindergartens. It is, ultimately, an open classroom in which a new form of pedagogy built on the respect for the environment is proposed, in order to increase awareness of the natural resources and of their use, as well as increase awareness of existing technologies.

In the case of Asunción we proposed a strategic plan with ten actions in order to promote a connection between the several parts of the city through the development of spaces, named “corridors“, and of individual buildings, named “urban catalysts“, which might act as drivers of change and benchmarks within the city. The corridors are divided into three types: those “green“, which introduce a new green infrastructure in specific parts of the existing roads; those “civic“, which consist of a new network of public spaces along the roads in order to connect the most important historic and government buildings; those “dynamic“, aimed at creating active urban environments and encourage economic and cultural activities.

Configuration of a charateristic dynamic corridor

Among the actions of Asunción strategic masterplan one concerns the economic and landscaping regeneration of the “Green Active Coast”. Due to its topography, this area is subject to cyclical floods because of the rising water level of the Paraguay River. That forces the inhabitants of the informal settlements who live there to move temporally. While fully respecting the identity of the river and of the existing topography, we have proposed the creation of a green lung with a large sports area in continuity with the Bicentennial Park. We also promoted the integration of the informal settlements both within the urban fabric and in the areas of new urban expansion.

The Encarnación masterplan incorporates within its own name the concept of “sustainability”, since it is composed of the “Plan of Sustainable Development” and of the “Plan of Urban and Territorial Organization”. The “Plan of Sustainable Development” will establish the standards and mechanisms for the growth and for the future development of the city according to the criteria of sustainability. The “Plan of Urban and Territorial Organization” aims at directing the use and the occupation of the territory in the urban and rural areas of the municipality. Officially, the city will face in the next twenty-four years an increase of the population amounted to 62,000 people, for whom it will be necessary to provide a massive increase in housing. The model we proposed to face this need refers to the sustainable principle of “the compact city.” Through the identification of a physical border for the city’s urban growth, we have protected the rural areas from new settlements. Moreover, we encouraged, through private and municipal initiatives, the densification of areas already developed, by filling the vacant urban lots and expanding pre-existing single-family homes.

Example of urban densification

The new interventions follow the principles of the bioclimatic architecture: large overhanging roofs and vegetation as protections from the hot summer sunlight, the use of wind to moderate the hot and humid climate of Encarnación, the reuse of rainwater, and the increase of the vegetation to absorb CO2 emissions.

TECHNOLOGY

In all four projects, technology represented an important collaborative tool to promote our work and to enable everyone to be constantly updated on ongoing progress, but also as a support for the participatory process, so that the involvement of the citizens would not be exhausted with the end of the activities organized, but could continue to map needs, issues, concerns and initiatives for those interested.

For this reason we have developed a platform, called Local-in (formerly What if ..?), which has been adapted to each project according to their personality and to the peculiarities of each participatory process, while maintaining a common format. Local-in is a free and accessible to everyone application of collective mapping. In it, registered users can add messages, photos and geolocalised links, sorting them into categories and labels. It’s easily installable and customizable, in perfect harmony with the spirit of the projects themselves, and it can be found for each project under the name “AsuMAP” for Asunción, with the name “Encarnación Más” for Encarnación, as “Cuenca RED” for Cuenca and with the name “Centro Histórico Abierto” for Distrito Central.

Open Shore is a complex project that addresses many different topics in an effort of providing solutions to several challenges that the city of West Palm Beach shares with many other cities. For this reason, we decided to present more in detail our project in a series of 3 posts dedicated to the three main points of the proposal: #1, Strategy to trigger the Change; #2, Waterfront: celebrating unexpected public space; #3, Banyan Hub: a city into a building.

Before going into detail of our proposal, it would be useful to introduce the context of the city of West Palm Beach.

As reported in the Shore to Core Competition Website, West Palm Beach is a young city that is growing quickly. Many associate this region with a large retirement community, but there is also a growing population of people in their 20s and 30s, as well as large Black and Hispanic populations. The city’s downtown and 10-mile waterfront present an opportunity to develop new amenities that reflect the city’s emerging populations, and design is a crucial tool for tackling these evolving needs.

The design competition asks: How can we reimagine our downtowns to make them more engaging and vibrant? How can cities collect information that informs future adaptation and growth? How can we facilitate social interaction among diverse groups? How can the built environment improve residents’ physical health, mental health, and social capital?

Today we present the first post of the series, starting the narration of this exciting experience. This first chapter introduces the previous analysis and the general strategies that informed the design of the project areas.

Vision: Looking into the Future
Our vision for West Palm Beach envisages.. A city accessible and open to citizens and tourists alike. A city bustling with diverse people and activities all year long. A city open to the lagoon, with a downtown full of unique attractive places and innovative urban experiences. A healthy and comfortable city suitable for everyone, with spaces for children and elders, spaces to play, work, rest, eat, meditate or meet with other people. A city people want to live in and visit.

Opportunities, Strategies, Outcomes

The very first step in the elaboration of the Open Shore project has been the analysis of local context in order to define the existing opportunities in West Palm Beach. We analyzed 6 key aspects to deeply understand the challenges of the project from different perspectives: society, climate, health, mobility, sites and activity.

Here follows a video summarizing the key findings that emerged from this preliminary urban analysis that have been crucial in the definition of the design strategies and outcomes.

How to Trigger The Change?

Our approach to the project implies understanding West Palm Beach as a whole from the urban, cultural, social, economic and environmental perspectives. We analyzed available information as well as carried out our own surveys and interviews to identify relevant issues and areas of opportunity regarding new urban experiences.

The waterfront area is where the city shows its great potential, but also its needs for improvement: for better connection with the rest of the city; for balance against seasonal fluctuations; for social inclusiveness and diversity; for an expansion in urban density to achieve sustainable levels of activity; for resiliency against climatic, social or economic impacts; for improvement accessibility and public spaces of comfort; for innovation in combining and addressing all of these aspects in the best possible way.

These challenges require a holistic approach. We can trigger powerful transformations in the city by rethinking three key areas of West Palm Beach: the waterfront, the alleyways and the Banyan building. In parallel, a transversal strategy touches focal points allowing to reactivate the city.

Mobility and Accessibility

+ Connecting the Downtown with the Suburbs
The proposed design should be inclusive and inviting, enabling anyone to be part of the new downtown urban life and events. Downtown itself would be positively affected by, for example, younger visitors or residents, balancing the current population pyramid.

+ Upgrading Public Transit and Sustainable Mobility
Mobility is key to transforming downtown WPB into a more urban, efficient and friendly environment. First of all, it is necessary to improve public transport to allow people from the suburbs to reach downtown without the need of a car.

+ Optimizing the Management of Existing Parking Lots
Downtown WPB can count on numerous public and private parking lots and parking buildings all relatively close to one other and to the waterfront. There seems to be a lack of a comprehensive management system to allow citizens to find the closest free spot to their final destination. This would also free up space for more attractive and profitable uses like sports, events, etc. in places currently used only as part time parking lots.

+ Increasing Walkability for a More Lively Center
Improving the walkability of a place makes it better in terms of accessibility, inclusiveness, attractiveness, safety and comfort. A walkable downtown will be an improved downtown, attracting people to live, work and enjoy.

Resiliency and Climate Change

+ Introducing an Ecological Perspective in Existing Parking Lots
The extensive area covered with asphalt or concrete is one of the main ecological problems in a low density yet highly infrastructured city. Using landscaping techniques it is possible to progressively increase the permeable area while at the same time treating the runoff water. Parking lots also offer a great opportunity for including more vegetation and improving the climate and comfort in the urban fabric around them.

+ Increasing Street Permeability and Improving Stormwater Management
WPB streets are part of the city’s mobility system, but also play a fundamental role in the water management system: They serve to collect rainwater and direct it to the lagoon. Improvements in the permeability of the streets have a great impact in the water cycle.

+ Enhancing Lagoon Metabolism
Being a coastal city, West Palm Beach has an impact on the quality of the water of the Lake Worth Lagoon. It is necessary to avoid pollutants reach the lagoon in order to maintain and improve its natural biological state. Improving the water cycle, monitoring the pollutant loading, and encouraging on-site water treatment policies, are key factors to bringing people and activities to the water.

+ Adapting to Sea Level Rise with a Global Resilience Strategy
The proposal for the waterfront addresses the probable rise of the water level in the Lake Worth Lagoon over the next 100 years. Also wider and more effective strategy is necessary: more conscious urban planning is recommended in order to avoid new construction in low lands and encourage operations in safer areas.

Urban View

+ Introducing Functional Mix and Managing a Wider Urban Development
The extensive low density residential areas require an intense city center. The variety of uses will increase the “urbanity” and the level of economical resilience of the city, attracting new investments and boosting the local economy.

+ Boosting Year Round Activity and Reducing Seasonal Fluctuations
Two main factors influence the seasonal fluctuations of WPB economy and urban life: tourism and the climate itself. Wide fluctuations have a big economic and social impact. The first one can be approached by creating a more active city center. This will attract more permanent citizens and users whose presence in the city will not depend on touristic seasons. And the second can be addressed by reducing the impact of adverse climatic conditions.

+ Generating a Long Term Vision to Foster Urban Catalyzers
It is necessary to promote and encourage the development of dense, mixed use buildings similar to the Banyan Hub, capable of generating innovation by means of interaction between diverse users and activities in fruitful proximity.

+ Adopting an Ecological and Pedagogical Approach
The transformation of WPB can become a national and international example. A pilot experience for attracting visitors and future citizens to a city, and a case study on how to create unique urban waterscapes combining nature and technology.

Resiliency, Adaptation and Re naturalization for West Palm Beach

The waterfront is designed taking into account the estimation of the sea level rising by 3 feet over the next century. By working with topography it is possible to build a waterfront that remains usable regardless of the sea level, even in the case of very high tides. Furthermore, the variations make the space evolve over time and become more interesting: enlarging and shrinking depending on the time, the day and the year; hiding or showing parts of the topography; creating surprising interactions, etc. In terms of resiliency, another important factor is the preparation of all the urban elements for extreme weather events like storms and hurricanes.

All of the structures are designed to resist strong winds by means of their shape and flexible behavior. They are also conceived to be removable in case of need and to allow a rapid and affordable reparation in the event of damage.

While being a man-made extension of the city, an artificial ecosystem, the whole waterfront works together with the natural processes in a myriad of different ways.

It takes into account the water cycle, finding ways of absorbing, filtering, reusing and bringing rain water back to the lagoon and to the sea. It lets the water flow into urban space, and urban space flow into the water.

As part of a process of ‘renaturalization’, the waterfront explores many possible relations between construction and vegetation, letting it grow on top of structures, under artificial covers, in vertical surfaces or in hybrid, permeable pavements.

It blurs the limits between an urban space and a natural one, creating many opportunities to experience one, the other, or both at the same time.

A Constant Digital-Physical Interaction

The new waterfront of WPB will become one of the first truly augmented public spaces in the world. People will be able to interact with the physical space in innovative ways, either from their own mobile devices or through simple interfaces included among the urban elements, using off-the-shelf technologies like sensors, controllers, standard connection protocols, mobile applications and other common components arranged in new ways.

Enabling a digital layer for information, control and communication opens a wide new range of possibilities for responsive and actively controlled public spaces. This can be accomplished, not by building an automated ‘smart city’, but by empowering a generation of conscious ‘smart citizens’ that use their digital data and tools to adapt their urban environment to their own needs.

In the next post, we will introduce more in detail the strategy from “how” to “what”, describing the design features aiming to reactivate two key places of West Palm Beach: the Waterfront and the Passageways. Stay tuned!

PS. Here we share again the full document if you want to read more about our Open Shore proposal.

]]>http://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/open-shore-project-for-west-palm-beach-1-strategy-to-trigger-the-change/feed/1Ecosistema Urbano wins West Palm Beach Design Competition!http://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/ecosistema-urbano-wins-shore-to-core-design-competition/
http://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/ecosistema-urbano-wins-shore-to-core-design-competition/#respondThu, 27 Apr 2017 15:52:24 +0000http://ecosistemaurbano.org/?p=40160We are very happy to announce that our project Open Shore is the winning proposal of Shore to Core, the international design competition to reimagine downtown West Palm Beach as a dynamic, resilient waterfront city! We are thrilled with the great reception that the project has had, and eager to continue its development side by side with the people and the institutions of West Palm Beach.

Ecosistema Urbano | Open Shore | Rain Plaza

Here we share the press release from Van Alen Institute:

Van Alen Institute and the West Palm Beach Community Redevelopment Agency (WPB CRA) today announced Open Shore by Ecosistema Urbano as the winning proposal for the Shore to Core waterfront design competition. The Shore to Core competition invited international designers, planners and architects to envision what the future of the West Palm Beach waterfront could look like over the next 20 to 30 years, taking factors including populations, economies and the environment into account. The winning proposal will serve as a “vision board” for the city’s future, providing a starting point and framework to help the city adapt and make the most of the waterfront.

Ecosistema Urbano | Open Shore | Rain Plaza

Ecosistema Urbano | Open Shore | Plan

Selected from a pool of over 40 international teams and two finalists, Ecosistema Urbano’s winning proposal envisions a healthier and more resilient downtown and waterfront for West Palm Beach—a keystone city in southern Florida with a growing population of people in their 20s and 30s, as well as large Black and Hispanic populations. The competition proposals imagine new amenities that reflect the city’s emerging populations, and Shore to Core’s organizers believe that design is a crucial tool for tackling these evolving needs. The initiative included public consultation, and this input played a role in the jury’s decision-making process.

Ecosistema Urbano’s winning design answers Shore to Core’s call for a comprehensive, forward-thinking urban plan to make West Palm Beach’s waterfront a year-round destination for locals and visitors alike. The proposal includes what could be the first public bioclimatic domes in the U.S. adorned with hanging gardens. These domes create climatically comfortable spaces 365 days a year, thereby supporting a more socially cohesive city.

The proposal also illustrates how the city’s Banyan Garage could be upcycled into a mixed-use building with both public- and private-sector roles featuring adaptive climates suitable for a range of activities, including a farmers market, coworking spaces, and skyline viewing platforms. Additional amenities include vibrant thematic alleyways—with such features as a rock climbing wall, interactive exhibition space, and immersive foliage—that harness the cultural values and experiences unique to West Palm Beach, while also providing shade and introducing new elevated programming spaces

Ecosistema Urbano will present their proposal to the WPB CRA board in May 2017. The CRA board will identify priority projects within the Banyan Garage and downtown alleyways, and then contract with Ecosistema Urbano. This process will be followed by outreach to the community about the individual elements that are scheduled for possible implementation in late 2017 or early 2018.

“The Shore to Core competition and resulting proposals truly offered insights into how we can plan a strong and vibrant future for our city,” said Jeri Muoio, Mayor of the City of West Palm Beach. “Ecosistema Urbano’s design was applauded by all as enhancing the waterfront and creating new, iconic experiences that incorporate our natural resources, cultural spaces, and inclusive urban atmospheres.”

“Ecosistema Urbano’s proposal addresses social cohesion in a compelling way by integrating locally responsive systems with a welcoming public space that will further diversify the city,” said David van der Leer, Executive Director of Van Alen Institute. “We’re thrilled that West Palm Beach is looking to the future and rethinking how to create a downtown that is uniquely theirs— a downtown that enhances the wellbeing of residents and visitors alike.

The runner-up design finalist, Perkins + Will, created a proposal focusing on community-building with a continuous waterfront park, extended Great Lawn, and the Banyan Garage revitalized as a multi-use civic space. Van Alen has synthesized the work of the finalist teams into a key findings document, “A Shore Thing: Key Findings from the Shore to Core Competition,” that summarizes the shared insights from all three proposals.

The Shore to Core competition has parallel research and design tracks: The aim of this structure is to understand how waterfront cities like West Palm Beach can become healthier, and to create design strategies that will make them more responsive to rising sea levels. The winning research team, Happier by Design, focused on how specific types of public spaces may increase the wellbeing of people who use them, and conducted a pilot study analyzing the health benefits of more complex and engaging urban landscapes.

By testing environmental psychology principals with tactical urban interventions, Happier by Design found that public space designs that boost feelings of fascination foster wellbeing. The research team also recommended that designers focus individuals’ attention on nature and create spaces that are both comfortable and interactive, including such features as movable seating and adjustable lookouts that frame the landscape. The team’s recommendations affirm the dynamic and engaging designs proposed by Ecosistema Urbano. The combination of innovative research and original design in Shore to Core reflects Van Alen’s mission to use research and design to inform the planning of new civic spaces.

We are very excited to share with all of you the final document of our proposal for West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

As we shared last December, we were one of the two finalist teams selected for the competition “Shore to Core”, commissioned by the West Palm Beach Community Redevelopment Agency and organized by the Van Alen Institute. The competition was aimed at finding innovative solutions for the city’s downtown, facing such varied challenges such as sea level rise, climatic conditions, seasonal fluctuations and social transformation, among others.

In particular, it was required to provide solutions and ideas for several specific areas of the city: the waterfront structured by Flagler Drive, annex spaces such as the Great Lawn or the Meyer Amphiteather; the existing alleyways, which currently serve as delivery spaces and have a great potential for public space use; and the Banyan Garage, a municipal parking building which could become the catalyst project of the whole urban transformation.

A Lively and Inclusive Downtown With a New Iconic Waterscape Experience

Our proposal imagines the future West Palm Beach as a dynamic and inclusive downtown. It will provide access to a new urban waterscape, enhancing the city’s connection to the lagoon and all of its infinite possibilities of urban leisure and enjoyment. The new waterfront incorporates a wide array of outdoor activities and public spaces multiplying the possibilities of interaction with the water. Youth and seniors are taken into account within a healthier living environment for all of West Palm Beach’s residents and visitors.

The ecological and resilient design allows people to enjoy a more comfortable environment all year round. It will be active, continually changing day and night. It will host diverse outdoor spaces with gorgeous views and the capacity to foster different activities. This new urban environment blurs the line between the city and the water, bringing the nature of the Lagoon back to the city center while adapting to rise of the sea-level and resisting to natural hazards.

The Waterfront: A Playful and Interactive Urban Waterscape. Take a break and have a refreshing swim at the Aquatic Plaza.

Rain Plaza. Experience the rainbow on a sunny day.

A Sustainable Aquatic City Combining Leisure and Urban Activities. Enjoy the most attractive urban waterscape in Florida!

The New Generation Of Civic Minded Buildings Starts In West Palm Beach

The Banyan Garage is reimagined as a new beacon for activities in Downtown. This hybrid and exceptionally flexible building will be open to the public day and night and it will have an active presence in the city, attracting business and talent with its varied programs. This new hub will be a place where people create knowledge, cultivate culture, foster innovation, and even produce goods. Its configuration allows many different uses to coexist, which also makes it flexible to adapt to changing needs in the future.

It is an accessible building that will become a true part of the city, starting from the ground floor all the way to the public roof terrace. Its ecological design features a green permeable façade and two themed courtyards -one natural and one digital- that will ensure pleasant environmental conditions all year round while also reducing the building’s environmental impact and management costs.

The final presentation in front of the jury members will take place next March 30th in West Palm Beach… We are now ready and very much looking forward to it!!!

]]>http://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/ecosistema-urbanos-proposal-for-west-palm-beach-now-published/feed/0Ecosistema Urbano is working with the European Commission in EU GPP Criteria for Public Space Maintenancehttp://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/ecosistema-urbano-is-working-with-the-european-commission-in-eu-gpp-criteria-for-public-space-maintenance/
http://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/ecosistema-urbano-is-working-with-the-european-commission-in-eu-gpp-criteria-for-public-space-maintenance/#commentsFri, 10 Mar 2017 09:51:08 +0000http://ecosistemaurbano.org/?p=39384

Green Public Procurement (GPP) is defined in the Communication (COM (2008) 400) “Public procurement for a better environment” as “a process whereby public authorities seek to procure goods, services and works with a reduced environmental impact throughout their life cycle when compared to goods, services and works with the same primary function that would otherwise be procured.” GPP is a voluntary instrument, which means that Member States and public authorities can determine the extent to which they implement it.

Public authorities are major consumers in Europe: they spend approximately 1.8 trillion euro annually, representing around 14 % of the EU’s gross domestic product. By using their purchasing power to choose goods and services with lower impacts on the environment, they can make an important contribution to sustainable consumption and production.

Green purchasing is also about influencing the market. By promoting and using GPP, public authorities can provide industry with real incentives for developing green technologies and products. In some sectors, public purchasers command a significant share of the market (e.g. public transport and construction, health services and education) and so their decisions have considerable impact. EU GPP is an important tool as it can contribute to the stimulation of the market for environmentally-friendly goods, works and services and to contribute to the development of a more resource-efficient economy in the EU. The Commission has developed EU GPP criteria for around 20 different product groups.

Here the complete list of 20 product groups considered for EU GPP Criteria, and as you may notice the range is really wide, from Office Building Design, Construction and Management, to Transport or Computer and monitors, to mention a few.

We are now working on the first phase of the project for the development of the EU GPP Criteria for Public Space Maintenance. One of the very first document produced is a Stakeholder Questionnaire aiming to define the scope. The questionnaire has been sent to several identified stakeholders from the supply side (Providers of maintenance services, equipment, public furniture, etc), demand side (public and non-public procurers) and other stakeholders, such as national or local policy makers, environmental organizations, urban planners and designers, citizens organizations, etc.

The scoping questionnaire is available at the following link for all interested parties to contribute:

]]>http://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/ecosistema-urbano-is-working-with-the-european-commission-in-eu-gpp-criteria-for-public-space-maintenance/feed/1Ruralism: The Future of Villages and Small Towns in an Urbanizing World | Book and Interviewhttp://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/ruralism/
http://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/ruralism/#respondMon, 06 Feb 2017 17:04:25 +0000http://ecosistemaurbano.org/?p=39257

Last year we were contacted by Vanessa Miriam Carlow from the Institute for Sustainable Urbanism to make an interview for the book Ruralism: The Future of Villages and Small Towns in an Urbanizing World. This book is dedicated to the significance of rural spaces ‘as a starting point for transformation’. Different international experts were asked to reflect on rural spaces from an architectural, cultural, gender-oriented, ecological, and political perspective and ask how a (new) vision of the rural can be formulated. As the introduction states:

In an urbanizing world, the city is considered the ultimate model and the measure of all things. The attention of architects and planners has been almost entirely focused on the city for many years, while rural spaces are all too often associated with visions of economic decline, stagnation and resignation. However, rural spaces are transforming almost as radically as cities. Furthermore, rural spaces play a decisive role in the sustainable development of our living environment—inextricably interlinked with the city as a resource or reservoir. The formerly segregated countryside is now traversed by global and regional flows of people, goods, waste, energy, and information, linking it to urban systems and enabling them to function in the first place.

Today we are publishing the interview, answered by Belinda Tato. If you find it interesting, there is much more in the book! We recommend you to get a printed copy here. Here is the full transcript of the interview:

Q: Your office name, ecosistema urbano, brings with it a certain tension that somehow combines unexpected contrasts. How did you come to this name and what do you want to express with it?

A: It took us a while to choose a name or concept that communicated our interests and the complex reality of urban issues we face. We found the idea of ‘ecosystem’ an appealing one, its definition implies a group of interconnected elements formed by the interaction of a community with their environment. This relationship between the natural and the artificial aims for a balance between these two worlds, and reflects the issues we care about when designing architecture and practicing territorial and urban planning.

Q: In your presentation, you said that during your studies the planning approach mainly focused on infrastructure and the physical environment. How would you describe the situation today?

A: I believe there is a clear shift between the object-focused educational approach from the nineties towards a more polyhedral approach and understanding of cities and design that is happening today. There is a growing interest in considering processes and interactions and taking the social, cultural, or economic aspects into account leading to more comprehensive and ambitious proposals to transform reality.

Q: Which approach does your office have today? How would you describe the current role of the architect and planner?

Urban. Social. Design. Three words that describe our dedication: the urban context, the social approach, and the design understood as an action, an interaction, and a tool for transformation. Understanding types of behaviour and processes at different levels is crucial.

Creativity is a network. In a globalized world, creativity is the capacity to connect things innovatively and thus we understand that the protagonist of the creative process is not just a team but an open and multi-layered design network.

Community first. Cities are created and maintained by people for people, and urban development only makes sense when the community cares about it. We work to empower the communities to drive the projects that affect them, so social relevance is guaranteed.

Going glocal. Just as cities have residents and visitors, and planning is made at different scales, every urban project is born in a constant movement between the direct experience and specificity of the local context, and the global, shared flow of information and knowledge.

Accepting –and managing– conflict. Participation, like conversation, means letting all the points of view be raised and listened to. Public debate only makes sense if all the stakeholders are involved. Every project affecting the city has to deal with both opposition and support, consensus and contradiction.

Assuming complexity. Encompassing the complexity of the urban environment requires simplifying it. Instead, we prefer to admit its vast character and understand our work as a thin layer –with limited and, at times, unpredictable effects– carefully inserted into that complexity.

Learning by doing. Our experience grows through practice. We know what we can do, and we challenge ourselves to do what we think we should be doing. We solve the unexpected issues as we move, and then we take our lesson from the process and the results.

Planning… and being flexible. Urban development is what happens in the city while others try to plan it. We think ahead, make our dispositions, but we are always ready for reality to change our plans… mostly for the better. Rigidity kills opportunity, participation and urban life.

Embracing transdisciplinarity: We assume that our role as professionals is evolving, disciplinary bonds are loosening, urban projects are complex, and circumstances are continuously changing. This requires open-minded professionals, flexible enough to adapt their roles and skills and to use unusual tools.

Technology as a social tool: Today’s technology enables us to better relate and interact with each other and with the surrounding environment. As the digital-physical divide narrows and the possibilities multiply, it becomes an increasingly significant element in urban social life.

Keeping it open: Open means transparent, accessible, inclusive, collaborative, modifiable, reproducible. Open means more people can be part of it and benefit from it. These are the attributes that define a project made for the common good.

Q: From your presentation, it emerged that the integration of the local conditions—as a climatic and social issue—represent an important focus of your work. How do you rate the relationship between global-local influence in relation to the architectural or urban design?

A: This is a very interesting question, and one we have asked ourselves several times. We have worked mostly abroad during the last years, and over and over we find the same situation where we have to balance the local and the global dimensions of design and planning. Local conditions are always the main terms of reference for our work. They give accuracy and pertinence to our proposals. They not only determine the boundaries we have to respect, the resources we have available, or the particularities we have to take into account, but also the potential for improvement that each particular place has. Local context is a source of invaluable site-specific knowledge, even if that knowledge is not always conscious or apparent, especially to locals. Opening a project to participation is a great way to make local values stand out and locals become self-aware… if you are able to ask the right questions and then read between the lines, of course. But relying solely on local conditions rarely provides the best solutions. You usually find situations that have become stagnant precisely by the lack of confrontation and external feedback. Then you need to confront the local ‘ways,’ often loaded with prejudices or relative narrowness, or with something else. And that is where global influence comes into play: the contrast, the opposition that clears concepts, breaks groupthink and gives a relative measure to local values. Global is the mirror that local can use to become self-conscious. We could speak of bringing knowledge from the global to the local, or even generating local knowledge by confronting it with the global. But it is also creativity that is being created or transferred. The ability to connect, articulate, and interpret different contexts is crucial whenever a new approach is needed and local conditions have proven insufficient to deliver it.

Q: You showed us some practical examples of your current work, which pursues sustainable approaches in terms of water recycling systems for the kindergarten in Madrid or climatic adaptations for the Expo pavilion in Shanghai. What opportunities do you see for the implementation of sustainable planning tools or strategies in larger, urban scale projects?

A: Urban planning and urban design have a great impact on people’s lives, shaping the way we live, move, relate, consume, etc… In addition to this, its impact will be of a long term as it is less ephemeral than architecture. For these reasons, it is important to design integrating with nature, its cycles and processes, taking advantage of the environment and optimizing interventions.

Q: Let us take a closer look at the countryside: in the current city-centered discourse, rural spaces are often dismissed as declining or stagnating. However, rural spaces also play a critical role in sustainable development, as an inextricably linked counterpart, but also as a complement to the growing city, as extraction sites, natural reservoirs for food, fresh water and air, or as leisure spaces. Do we need to formulate a (new) vision of ‘ruralism’? What would be your definition of the future rural? What new concepts for the rural exist in Spain?

A: When talking about ecosystems, it is crucial to understand the interwoven connections between the urban and the rural, and how they relate and affect each other in a critical balance. Although the urban expansion has some environmental consequences, there are also some interesting phenomena happening. As today’s IT keeps us connected and allows us to work remotely, this neoruralism enables us to have a renewed vision of the territory and its possibilities, offering development opportunities in towns that have been abandoned for decades, for instance in Spain. This new trend is transforming these abandoned towns into new activity hubs, creating a new migration flux from cities. It will be possible to measure the socioeconomic impact of this activity in a few years.

Q: The once remote and quiet countryside is now traversed by global and regional flows of people, goods, waste, energy, and information, interrelating it with the larger urban system. Is a new set of criteria for understanding and appreciating the rural required? How would you measure what is rural and what is urban?

A: In a globalized world with an unprecedented ongoing process of urbanization, and under the impact of climate change and global warming, it is becoming more and more difficult to precisely define the limits between the rural and the urban as the urban footprint is somehow atomizing and gobbling the rural. Cities are the combination and result of the simultaneous interaction between nature and artificial technology, and their ecological footprint expansion forces the extraction of natural resources from even further sources, with obvious environmental consequences. At the local scale, it is necessary to point out the close relationship between the way a city relates to its environment, the way it manages its natural resources, and the quality of life it can provide to its inhabitants. This could be summarized as: the more sustainable a city/territory is, the better its inhabitants will live.

Q: What role do villages and smaller towns have in a world in which the majority live in cities? Could you comment on and describe a bit about the situation in Spain or the other countries you have been working in?

A: In cities, innovation and creativity concentrate and emerge naturally. The rural environment also requires people willing to create, to innovate, to connect, etc…. This creative ruralism could lead to the creation of eco-techno-rural environments, which would provide some of the features of the rural combined with specific services of the urban…the perfect setting for innovation to take place!

Q: Which role could the rural play at the frontlines of regional transformation and sustainability? What are the existing and potential connections between urban and rural spaces?

A: The rural could provide a complementary lifestyle for people fleeing from the city to re-connect or re-localize. At the same time, we would need to explore and expand technology’s possibilities, pushing its actual limits, and foreseeing potential new services that could enhance life in the rural by making it more diverse, fulfilling, and even… more global.

Q: And what role can urban design play in preparing rural life and space for the future? Is the rural an arena for ‘urban’ design at all?

A: I think the challenge would be to create the conditions for social life and interaction. We do have the conditions for that activity to happen digitally, but how can we foster social activity in low-density environments? Would it be necessary to create small urban nodes in the rural? These issues are interesting challenges we have to face conceptually and design-wise.

All evaporative cooling rely on the energy required for the evaporation of water to absorb heat from the air and lower the temperature. This is due to the very high enthalpy of vaporization of water, the phase transition between the liquid and the gaseous state requires in fact a large amount of energy (which is more properly called enthalpy) that is taken from the air in the form of sensible heat (which is the temperature, something we feel with our skin and determines our comfort) and it is converted into latent heat (which is an energy “hidden” in the vapor component of the air). The result of this adiabatic process is a drop in the temperature of air and an increase in its humidity, therefore it’s clear that this cooling system is particularly effective in dry and hot climate zones where the higher humidity and the lower temperature can be both seen as advantages. Clearly the evaporating process is a key also for some convective cooling processes (that we treated here) but they rely also on the reduced buoyancy of cooler and more humid air to obtain the final effect while evaporative cooling techniques only rely on the evaporation of water.

Although primitive evaporative techniques were used in ancient times (in combination with convective and ventilation devices like windcatchers and qanats in iran) and porous water jars are still used in many hot areas in combination with Mashrabiyaother ventilation apertures to naturally cool down the interior of buildings the use of evaporation to cool down outdoor spaces is very recent. Evaporative cooling depends largely on how effective we are able to evaporate water, and a basic physical variable plays a big role in this case: surface-area-to-volume ratio, the more surface area we are able to expose the more energy we are able to exchange. There are basically two ways to proceed nowadays to maximize the surface area, evaporative pads and misting. Evaporative pads are generally used in evaporative cooling machines oriented to indoor cooling, these pads are cheap and effective but they are relatively fragile, require continuous maintenance and are most effective in controlled environments where the airflow can be adjusted and controlled, the “wetpads” are made of porous materials that have to be maintained wet while air passes through. The peculiar structure of these materials offers the largest possible surface area to the passing air which is then humidified and pushed into the building or the room. This technique can’t be used for outdoor cooling clearly because of the required control to the ariflow that is necessary.

Misting is instead widely used nowadays to lower temperatures both in buildings and open spaces. The use of water mist to generate passive cooling in closed buildings is strictly related to passive (or mechanical) evaporation towers and therefore to what we have been explaining in the convective technique post in open spaces the use of water jets and mist is instead very efficient (of course depending on specific climate conditions) and cost effective.

Although it is not strictly designed to be a bioclimatic public space, the Miroir d’eau designed by Michel Corajoud in 2006 in Bordeaux is one of the most successful examples of water evaporation usage in public space design. In this case a large square, just in front of the famouse Place de la Bourse, is designed to be a large water mirror where hundreds of water nozzles spray water from the floor either in the form of a fountain or of a mist cloud. In the first case, where tall gushes are produced, water evaporation is limited and the playful atmosphere dominates the large plaza, but when short mist clouds are produced the evaporation rate of the water is greatly increased and a cooling effect is produced, although in Bordeaux climate conditions are quite mild, and hot days are limited to few occasions during summer the square is very popular.

Vaporizing water coming from the floor is a quite common and effective mean to condition large open spaces, the effect that everybody has noticed of a slight refreshment when passing by a fountain in a square or, even more, while staying close to a waterfall is due to the very same thermodynamic principle, the small drops of water that the are created when water breaks while falling to the ground or splashing into more water dramatically increase the surface-area-to-volume ratio favoring a faster evaporation, the nebulized microscopic drops evaporate instantly causing a sudden temperature drop that can be magnified by the wind or other design inventions. In the Sevilla 1992 EXPO this effect was widely used, large fountains and water basins were placed all around the EXPO along all the main paths and squares to increment climatic comfort, in some areas even vertical walls of water were designed to expose the visitors to an even more effective cooling device, but the most common strategy was the use of conventional fountains and mist nozzles integrated in the many green shading roofs.

The design of these spaces has to be developed with special care, the effectiveness of the strategies used in Seville for example varied much depending on the surrounding conditions, evaporative cooling could be very effective if combined with the right design of protective and shading elements, with a correct sun and wind exposure and material use but could be also nullified simply by not considering the wind variation. Even if water vaporization is widely used in many terraces, bars, public venues, etc. because of its low cost, obtaining an effective bioclimatic effect is harder to achieve. Ecosistema Urbano employs evaporative cooling in one of their seminal project, in the Vallecas ecoboulevard, the Ludic and the Media Tree are not equipped with evaporative towers but with water spraying nozzles that are oriented towards the circular public space beneath them.

The main innovation in the use of evaporation in this case is due to the form of the designed public space, because, as we already said, there is not much to innovate about the nozzles technology itself. Actually the most important issue is the control of the water flow and pressure as it has to be correctly regulated depending on the actual dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperature, relative humidity etc. in the case that those variables are considered, evaporation should be instantaneous without any dripping nor condensation. In the case of the Media Tree temperature and humidity sensors regulate the flow and the pressure of the water flowing to the spraying nozzles constantly adapting it to the weather conditions. In this case the design is particularly effective not only because of the cooling technology but mostly because of the shadow provided by the “trees” themselves and the protective design of the ground section that allow the cooled air to linger in the “inhabited” space and not being immediately dispersed.

But misting has a close bound with atmosphere and space, being one of the few atmospheric phenomena that we can directly observe fog and mist have been used also to define spaces, these new approaches, even though not directly related with bioclimatic architecture, open the door for future developments. In one of their most famous, and paradoxically iconic, works Diller+Scofidiodesigned a “formless, massless, colorless, weightless, odorless, scaleless, featureless, meaningless” that was basically made of mist and nothing else. Their explication for the work was open-ended, blur-building was not only the name they gave to it but also a factual assertion: the definition of it was also blurry. This event contributed to redefine, or to destroy, the meaning of building and the separation between what is a building and what is environment, up to even questioning what is architecture, for the first time the space was not defined by walls or windows or any stable solid material but was only an undefined mutating cloud made of vaporized water.
But this wasn’t in fact the first building that used mist water to blur its edges (although that they are all curiously related to universal expositions, more about expos here), the Pepsi pavilion in Osaka was the result of the fructuous cooperation between engineers and artists within the Experiments in Art and Technology group and it was constantly covered with a thick layer of fog that partially hid it. In this case the building was still present and firm, a concrete entity with an interior and exterior form and a “conventional” space inside but the fog sculpture, designed by the japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya who spent her life working with fog, contributed to the creation of a memorable innovative pavilion.

At the Seville EXPO in 1992 the so called “bioclimatic sphere” was also one of the main attractions of the whole exhibition and surely one of the most iconic ones. A tubular sphere was placed in the middle of one of the most important boulevards of the exhibition rounded by fountains and water basins as a part of the bioclimatic design of the open space of the exhibition. Although being highly symbolic and recognizable this sphere as reported in the follow-up publications about the Expo was not really contributing to any bioclimatic effect on the square or the boulevard, this depended basically on the fact that the device was placed in an open space and the diffusion of mist was not controlled in any way (a very interesting publication about the follow up of the climate conditioning in the EXPO 92 has been published by the same engineers that contributed to the design of the project and a short extract can be found here).

Esféra Bioclimática, EXPO Sevilla 1992.

In 2016 also the famous artist Olafur Eliasson started working with fog and misting, naturally he is not concerned with the bioclimatic function of fog but more about the terms of landscape and vision and interaction between the user and the fog itself. Placed in the Versailles garden, “fog assembly”, is a ring emitting a swirling mist that involves the objects around and changes appearance depending on the site conditions. The user is invited to interact with the installation, crossing it and begin part of the fog it is producing, in this sense, this artwork can be easily assimilated to a public space generating a connection with the theme of this research.

Con·vec·tion. Convection results from the tendency of most fluids to expand when heated.

The use of convective air flows with the purpose of cooling traditional houses was not alien to traditional Persian and middle eastern architecture. Joining the “simple” badgir ventilation system with more refined and complex cooling technologies was one of the most advanced points reached by Persian/Iranian building knowledge. Passive cooling systems in the Yazd desert were so advanced that iced formed (and accumulated) during the cold winters could be conserved frozen until the height of the long, hot, desertic summer.
In addition to sensible cooling, the cooling caused by a change of air temperature but not its humidity, badgir combined with a savvy use of water can provide also evaporative cooling which is generally more effective than sensible cooling alone.

Water deposit cooled with badgirs in the Yazd desert, in Iran. Image courtesy of Flickr user dynamosquito, CC BY-SA

In order to do so, windcatchers have to work together with a water source that supplies water which is then evaporated cooling down the flowing air, this can be achieved in many ways. The first one is taking advantage of the of the basement damp walls of the windcacher itself, if there is enough humidity in the underground the basement walls will be constantly wet and when the wind tower is working as an air intake the evaporation of the thin superficial layer of water will cool down the downward incoming stream of air. The second solution is to put a water source, if available, right under the shaft of the tower, a fountain or a small pool is used in this case, sensibly and evaporatively cooling down the entering wind. A great example, found in Yazd, combines and refines even more these two methods placing the tower further than usual from the house (50 m) and then using an underground tunnel to connect the tower with the house. The tunnel, being underground benefits both from the earth thermal inertia and from the humidity of the soil and at the end of the tunnel a fountain is placed to cool down even more the air. The third, and more advanced, passive cooling system based on windcatchers benefits from an underground water stream to cool down the water.

The use of convection with the purpose of cooling public space is mostly centered on evaporative towers, in a normal evaporative (cooling) tower hot water is distributed in the upper part of the tower, the sprayed hot water release heat in the atmosphere condensing and flowing down to the bottom of the tower where it is collected and recirculated if it’s the case. In evaporative towers designed to cool the surrounding space the process is inverted, cool water is sprayed with nozzles at the top of the tower and rapidly evaporating absorbs energy from the air coming in from the top of the tower, the cooler and more humid air being denser descends to the bottom and causing the area above it to cool down. The design of an evaporative tower able to work properly is challenging, a single design flaw or dysfunction can cause the sprayed water to condensate an drip.

During the 1992 Seville Expo the white towers of the Avenida de Europa were originally designed just to be architectural objects landscaping one of the main avenues of the exhibition but considering a wider plan to improve public space comfort in the whole exhibition area, technically developed with the help of the “termotecnica” group of the university of Seville, were converted into evaporative towers to improve the environmental conditions in the area.

The design, obviously not conceived thinking about the cooling effectiveness, had to be converted a posteriori into a cooling machine. Two main modifications were made: a wind collecting cap was added to the top of the tower and nozzles were installed inside it. For six months the exhibition remained open and the engineers responsible for the bioclimatic design of the event collected data about the functioning and the performances of the design (the report can be found in this book). The added wind-collecting cap proved to be too small for the purpose it was installed and was not sufficient to “catch” enough wind during an average summer day. The second flaw was caused by the structural design of the tower itself, the internal part of the chimney wasn’t smooth and wasn’t totally free either, the secondary steel structure that stiffened the tower was in fact a lattice continuously crossing the chimney section, water nozzles were installed in circles on the inner perimeter of the membrane and functioned properly but the vaporized water copiously condensed on the lattice structure causing continuous dripping under the tower itself. This was obviously a major flaw and the towers functioned only partially, also due to the difficult maintenance of the water nozzles.

In 2004 Ecosistema Urbano realized one of its most iconic designs, the eco bulevard in Vallecas, Madrid. Each one of the three trees has different characteristics and each one is focused on a different aspect of public space, but in this case the most interesting is the northernmost one that was designed as a rack of twelve evaporative cooling towers grouped to form a semi-enclosed public space shaded and cooled by the bioclimatic tree. Each one of the cylinders is made of two textile tubes, the exterior and reflexive one creates a protective layer for the inner cooling mechanism, the interior tube is the evaporative tower itself. A cap, provided with three openings to collect winds from all directions, is placed on the top of the inner cylinder, right under the cap there is a fan that starts spinning when temperatures rise above 28ºC to increment the existing breeze or to move the air if there is no breeze at all. About at the height of the fan water is sprayed creating a fine mist and its evaporation greatly increases the cooling effect on the air descending in the inner tube and then exiting in the semi-enclosed public space, delimited by the crown of the cooling towers.

The ecobulevar, being a fully designed public space, can count on many other design characteristics that improve the overall functioning of the cooling towers, their efficiency and the energetic behavior. The design of the public space under the “tree” is very important, the enclosing section, creates a favorable space for artificial climate conditioning, though it is an open space the “habitable” part (the first 2m from the ground) are somehow closed by the design of the pavement itself, this design contributes to the refrigeration of the central area reducing the hot breeze influence at the ground level and avoiding the direct escape of cooled air. Solar panels contribute to the over sustainability of the artifact generating enough energy to power the fans and the pump for the water. Extensive studies on the ecobulevar, demonstrated that air temperature at the ground level can be up to 9ºC cooler than the air at the top of the tree and that the average temperature difference is around 6,5ºC.

The last two examples are practically based on the same design principle but there are huge differences concerning both the size and the technological character of the project.

The first one is the wind tower that the British architects Foster+Partners designed for the Masdar Institute in the planned city of Masdar, Abhu Dhabi (which they also planned). The Masdar institute is, as of 2016, one of the few built parts of the city, which, in turn, is facing serious development and financial problems with only the 5% of the planned area being completed. The core plaza of the institute hosts a 45m tall windtower that contributes to the climatic comfort of the plaza channeling down the breezes that often spire in the desert, it is important to notice that the tower is not the only element designed to improve the ambient conditions of the plaza but all the strategies are focused on the sustainability and the comfort of both the buildings and the public spaces, in this case the dense urban form is supposed to reproduce the one of the traditional local architecture and buildings façades are self shadowing reducing the reflected sun radiation in the square, streets are narrow, etc.

This tower is a hi-tech interpretation of traditional ones, its size is greatly increased (the highest windtower in Iran is 33m high) and many design details are engineered improvements of the original windwoter concepts. The 45m teflon sleek tube is naturally designed to offer the smallest possible resistance to the passage of the wind and to reduce the possibility of condensation to the nebulized water used for passive cooling. Computer controlled louvers opens and close according the direction and the speed of the incoming wind and reduces the suction caused by negative pressure on the downwind side of the tower, with this refined mechanism, and the triangular design, the tower is always exploiting the precious wind. To increase even more the cooling potential a ring of water nozzles, also computer controlled, is placed right at the top of the shaft transforming this tower in a evaporative cooling device.

A low-tech version, though very similar in the functioning is the windtower built at the Nitzana Educational Village, in the Negev desert at the border between Israel and Egypt. This design is constituted only by a vertical metal chimney topped by a fixed wind catcher oriented towards the prevailing wind. The playful design is enhanced by a clever usage of the bottom part of the tower, a perforated ceramic brickwork is used to enclose a relatively generous meeting place that can host dozens of people from the local community, to reduce solar gain on the habitable part of the tower a sun protection is installed around it permanently shadowing the ventilating part.

The cooling process is based on a combination of wind-catching, mechanical ventilation, and evaporative cooling. In the upper part of the shaft a large fan is installed to generate an artificial windflow (power is apparently generated by solar panels placed on the south side of the tower) and under the fan two rings of nozzles are placed to implement passive evaporative cooling. Though being quite a raw design, this cooling tower uses all the technical mechanisms to achieve a cost effective cooling for the small public it has to refrigerate. Compared to the Masdar windtower this one might have a major flaw, in both the Ecobulevar and Masdar the proper cooling shaft is always protected from the direct sunlight, in this case instead the shaft is thermally conductive and prone to overheating,

But the most advanced look at what convection means for the perception and comfort of the human body in the space has to be find in Rahm’s “Digestible Gulf Stream”. In this project, two white sleek metal boards are placed at different heights in a room, one of the boards, placed on the floor, is constantly heated to 28º C, the second one, hanging at a higher point is cooled down to 12ºC. The temperature difference between the two panels creates a convective flow, the air heated on the lower plan becomes less dense and lighter and tends to float towards the second object that gradually cools it down causing it to descend until reaching again the warm plate. This constant air flow is invisible but certainly perceivable by the human body, for the purpose of the exhibition in fact, actors with different clothing (from naked to well dressed) were standing on the plates showing various levels of comfort and doing various activities that had a different impact on the heat production.

Rahm’s pioneering work in “climatic architecture” is extremely interesting, in this case the space is defined only by its temperature which is something we are not really used to, our normal physical division of space (walls, windows, curtains…) is totally visual but then our comfort is determined by variables like air temperature, this is particularly true in public space, where usually there are no “rooms” and the use (or the avoidance) of space is more often determined by factors like shadow, noise, comfort, etc.

Ven·ti·late. The natural or mechanically induced movement of fresh air into or through an enclosed space.

Natural ventilation was widely used in traditional architecture to improve the bioclimatic comfort of tents first, and then rooms and whole houses, before the advent of air conditioning, natural ventilation was one of the few techniques available to lower the temperature of a closed space exploiting the cooler winds blowing outside or just the movement of cooler air.
The first and most important examples of architectures using the wind as a cooling medium to improve indoor environmental conditions are found in Persian traditional architecture, the badgir (or mulqaf in arab) is an extraordinary piece of spontaneous design, using only the natural flow of the wind – often combined with many other bioclimatic arrangements like thick insulating walls, very packed constructions, small apertures, etc. – it is capable of cooling and improving the climatic comfort of a house in the torrid deserts of Iran and the Arabic Peninsula.

The badgir, in arid and dry climates is often combined with the use of water to implement evaporative cooling improving even more its cooling capacity and generating cool breezes even without the presence of winds outside, in this case the thermodynamic effect is not based only on ventilation but also on convection. The windtower, or literally windcatchers, can be found as a traditional element in most of the modern Islamic world area with few regional variations, its usage has been consistent through the ages but in the western gulf region it almost disappeared due to the rapid urban growth and modernization of the cities, in Bahrain, for example, only one ancient badgir remains.

The traditional usage of windcatchers has been nowadays reinterpreted in many ways using both natural and mechanical aided ventilation, the great Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy used it widely in his buildings, but for sure, one of the best practice (at least if we consider this research public-space oriented) is the Qatar University Campus designed by the Egyptian architect Kamal el Kafrawi (with the collaboration of Ove Arup) and opened in 1985.

In this groundbreaking project the use of windcatchers is systematic and characterizes the whole campus. Based on an octagonal and square plan geometry, the low rise concrete modules the projects makes large use of natural light and natural ventilation through the hundreds of windtowers that top every module and mashrabiyas to protect the classrooms from sunlight and permit the air circulation. The aggregation of the modules juxtapose classroom modules, halls and rest spaces enriched with vegetation and constantly ventilated through the roof.

In contemporary architecture, and specifically in the climatic improvement of public space, the use of ventilation devices, especially in high-humidity environments is quite a new thing and mechanical ventilation is generally used as a cost-efficient way to overcome tropical humidity especially in southeast Asia. Two projects are to be considered references in this case, one is Will Alsop’s Clarke Quay in Singapore and the other is Ecosistema Urbano’s Air Tree for the Shanghai Expo 2010.

In this 2006, project, Alsop is called to regenerate the Clarke Quay riverfront and the market with the objective of drawing tourists and locals back to the old Singapore’s waterfront. The most interesting thing of this bold design is certainly the bioclimatic intervention in the market, refusing to create a closed shopping mall the architect designed a mitigated semi-external space, protected from frequent rains and with improved environmental conditions.

Clarke Quay Redevelopment, Singapore. Image courtesy of Will Alsop.

The market intervention is composed by two main parts, the roof and the ventilation devices.
The roof is constituted by giant umbrella-like structures covering the internal streets of the market, the ETFE canopies covering the streets offer protection from both the rain and solar radiation that in this climate are equally detrimental for the use of public spaces. This roof maintains the temperature in the central square and the four streets of the market at around 28º Celsius when outside temperatures can rise up to a mean of 31ºC. But the most important and innovative feature are the “whale-tail” shaped ventilators placed in the vertical supports of the roof structure. These big fans have a fundamental role in maintaining good environmental conditions in the market streets, considered the high relative humidity level(year average 84%) ventilation is the only way to make the air tolerable. Using slow rotation fans these sculptural objects blow a constant breeze in the lower part of the market favoring the natural evaporation cooling of the skin.

Clarke Quay Redevelopment, Singapore. Image courtesy of Will Alsop.

The Air Tree that Ecosistema Urbano realized in Shanghai for the 2010 Expo is a prototype of an intervention in contemporary urban space. It is conceived as a new kind of public space, a technological urban furniture, which also serves as a virtual node of connectivity where users can actively interact. Its different technical layers enables multiple final configurations and a myriad of intermediate positions (opaque, translucent, transparent, bright, interactive, open, etc.). Different textiles for video projections allow an unlimited combination of scenarios adaptable to citizen needs. Its appearance can be transformed over the daily cycle, as well as through the different seasons. By sensors it is connected in real-time with the climatic conditions of Shanghai, constantly adopting the optimal physical and energy consumption configuration to generate climatic comfort for the citizens.

Air Tree Shanghai, 2010. Image Courtesy of Ecosistema Urbano

To improve climatic and environmental conditions, that in Shanghai basically have to deal with high temperature during summer and high relative humidity during all year, a 7.3 m diameter fan suspended by a tensegrity structure in the center of the space, at a height of 11.5 m provides air flows inside the space. Through a telescopic system the fan can be lowered several meters to come closer to the ground. The exact position and speed at each moment is determined according to the instant climatic conditions of the environment, real time monitored in the surroundings of the structure. Together with the variable configuration of the tree’s skin the flow of air generated with the fan can effectively improve the environmental conditions inside the tree.